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1. Describe the building that the introduction focuses on.

The story's introduction is focused on the town museum in a small Canadian town called Walley. The building is about two decades old and depicts the town's history in its displays of everyday items like butter churns and horse harnesses. One of the objects that it houses is the red box of instruments that once belonged to D. M. Willens, the optometrist who drowned in the Peregrine River.

2. Explain how the optometrist's instruments illustrate something about surface appearances.

The optometrist's instruments housed at the town museum all appear black at first glance. But the narrator makes a point of revealing that this is just black paint, and that in the places where the optometrist's hands touched the instruments most often, the paint has worn away to reveal the silver surface underneath. This makes the point that you can only maintain a surface appearance for just so long--human action over time will eventually wear holes in any facade.

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